Meet Mike Derrett piano tuner to the stars

On a main road in York, a few feet from heavy traffic and young people trudging off to university, you will find Mike Derrett and his pianos. His shop used to be a hairdressers. The drying hoods, sinks and sharp scissors are now gone. Instead the place is filled with the pianos Mike has brought back to tuneful life, or those gutted and awaiting his rooting attentions.

Often Mike leaves the shop to tune pianos – a skill he learned at Newark College in Nottinghamshire, where he studied piano technology. He reckons about half the three-year course was devoted to what is now an important aspect of his work.

“When I started I used to turn up at people’s houses and they’d open the door and say, ‘Oh, I was expecting someone about 50 years older’. I haven’t had someone say that to me for a while, so I guess Father Time is slowly catching up.”

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Mike, who is 36, can also be called out before concerts, as carting pianos around the country tends to put them out of whack. He tuned Jools Holland’s piano for a show at Grassington festival, and has done the same for Nick Cave, the Eagles and Flight of the Conchords before gigs at the First Direct Arena in Leeds.

Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.
Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.

“Stage lights, the heat, all affects the tuning,” says Mike.

He has been working on pianos for 15 years. He joined Cavendish at Bolton Abbey, the last remaining piano builder in the country, as head technician in 2016, and still works there often.

He then set up his first piano workshop at Buttercrambe, near Stamford Bridge. As the village is out of the way, and his workshop was even more out of the way, he moved the business to York last year.

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Now he seeks out instruments to rescue and rejuvenate, sometimes in part-exchange, sometimes just to take away an unwanted instrument.

Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.
Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.

The pianos in the workshop cost from around £1,000. He recommends buying reconditioned and second-hand pianos for environmental reasons, as new pianos have a large carbon footprint, and also because he says they sound better, more characterful.

In his workshop at the back of the shop, overlooking the yard of the undertakers next door, where hearses are washed and polished, Mike explains the art of tuning.

He uses as a teaching aid the partly gutted piano he is working on that day.

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Key to the job are the tuning pins driven into the pin block, which stands behind the cast iron plate in an upright piano, and holds the tension needed for the strings to be taut. It takes strength and finesse to set those pins using a tuning wrench (a sort of musical spark plug socket, if you like).

Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.
Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.

Mike eschews a digital tuner, preferring to work by ear.

“Usually there are around 250 strings to tune. You start in the middle. I start on middle C and building around that, so you are listening to the intervals, the thirds and fourths and fifths. You set an octave in the middle and then work down to the bass strings and then work up.”

The bass strings are set at a slant across the piano to bring them closer to the soundboard, a sort of natural loudspeaker at the back.

“Making bass strings is a dying art,” says Mike. “There’s a guy in Germany I usually get mine from. The bass strings have to be made to order for each piano. A new set of bass strings is a few hundred pounds.”

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Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.
Mike Derrett, owner of York Piano Workshop, Lawrence Street, York. Picture: James Hardisty.

He plays the piano for fun, which helps in tuning, and he always tickles out a piece when he’s done, before letting the owner take over.

“The best thing is when you have finished tuning and they sit down and play, that’s really satisfying.”

He is still learning about the oddities and intricacies of pianos.

“Every piano is different, every make does something individual. Especially with older pianos, especially older grand pianos, there was still experimentation going on. So I’ll come across something I haven’t seen before and have to work out what’s going on.”

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When people wish to sell or donate a piano, Mike accepts only those that are going to last and be a pleasure to play.

Does he sometimes turn down what he is offered?

“Yes, that happens a lot,” he says.

After a full restoration, an octogenarian piano should last another 80 to 100 years, although Mike points out that the conditions in a house can affect a piano.

“Damp is a no-no, also you don’t want it too dry, so it has to be the Goldilocks zone, kind of thing. Underfloor heating, they don’t tend to get on with underfloor heating. It affects the tuning and really dries out the soundboard.”

His shop is in a listed building and used to be part of next door.

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“We’ve got this door here which we can’t remove, that’s got to stay,” says Mike, pointing to a ghost door in the wall of his workshop. A portal to nowhere, but if opened it would lead to the funeral directors.

The workshop isn’t large, and on this visit nine pianos stand in the main part of the shop, with a baby grand on its side in the window, awaiting bass strings from Germany. A further three pianos are in the workshop.

The pianos come through the shop door, upended and on wheels. Mike mostly delivers the finished pianos himself. “They’re really heavy, you’ve got to know what you’re doing.”

There is a difference, Mike explains, between how an upright piano and a grand are set up.

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This concerns the action, the mechanism that connects the keys to the hammers that strike the strings. In the workshop he has a model of the action from a grand piano. This is more sophisticated than an upright’s hammer action.

“It’s a superior action because you can repeat a note so much faster. You don’t have to relax the key to its rest position before you can repeat the note. That and the finesse, it often just feels a lot smoother.”

That partly explains how Jools Holland can push out all those notes out as he boogies his fingers across the keys.

Mike says his first instrument is the guitar.

“And I played drums. I play a few instruments badly…”

That’s all right – some of us play one instrument badly.

He works six days a week, the shop is open every Saturday, and throughout the week by appointment, as he’s often out doing tunings or repairs. The first tuning is included in the price of the restored pianos he sells.

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“We leave it to settle in its new home for four or five weeks, then we give it a retune,” he says.

One downside to Mike’s job is that if he attends a concert he cannot help but notice if a piano is out of tune.

“It’s something you can’t turn off, you just hear it,” he says. “The most nerve-racking thing is when you’ve tuned it yourself, and you’re not listing to what they’re playing, you’re just thinking ‘Does that sound all right?’”

York Piano Workshop is at 65A Lawrence Street, York.

yorkpianoworkshop.com

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